Anyone in the market for some basil? Because I feel a little like Lucy at the chocolate factory trying to eat all of my quickly growing and delicious tasting fresh basil. There has been a lot of pesto in my life in the last few weeks! It's wonderful to see it sprouting up so quickly.

Click through the gallery below to see more of the quickly-growing produce.

So clearly my video skills could use some work, but check out the adorable video below of the fish's lunch time. The video starts as soon as the food is dropped, but the fish really start getting excited when it's had time to sink closer to the lower half of the tank. Rocky is the bigger fish darting right to the middle in excitement. Who doesn't get excited for lunch?

There are more baby fish! And they're endlessly fun to watch. On the right you'll see them in the bag in which they arrived. They have giant eyes and are eagerly checking out anything and everything. Just like babies of all species, they are curious and ready to explore the world.

They didn't stay in that bag long and were soon in their big tank, happily schooling and exploring.

Who doesn't love basil? Ours is growing by leaps and bounds! We had our first full basil harvest this past weekend and have been enjoying the herb fresh as well as in a delicious home-made pesto. We can't wait for more!

Unlike our lettuce, of course, the basil keeps growing. Instead of harvesting the full plants we chose to snip off the tops so that we can continue to harvest more leaves.

And due to some tank cleaning we were temporarily moving our fish around.. check out our biggest, Rocky! He's the new mascot of FOCUS Foods. (There's some reflection but you can see him in the top of the photo)

As we move forward with plans for our first pilot (a 10,000 sq ft farm) we've put our first press release - below. It's already been picked up by the Daily Pennsylvanian. We can't wait to break ground!

FOCUS Foods, a new Philadelphia startup that sells healthy and environmentally sustainable produce and fish to area grocery stores and restaurants, recently took home the Grand Prize in business plan competitions at Harvard Business School and Carnegie Mellon University.

The awards, which total over $130,000 in cash and in-kind prizes, will be used to finance the company’s first 10,000 square foot greenhouse located on the roof of a ShopRite Supermarket, owned and operated by the Brown family, in the Parkside section of West Philadelphia. The company also seeks to expand its operations to other grocery stores and high-end farm-to-table restaurants interested in the company’s environmental and social mission.“We are absolutely thrilled to have done so well in these competitions,” said FOCUS Food co-founder and CEO Julia Kurnik. “This will allow us to really jump-start our production immediately and provide Philadelphia residents with the freshest, most sustainable fish, fruits, and vegetables anywhere.”The company won the Social Enterprise Track in the Harvard Business School’s New Ventures Competition for its plan to use aquaponics technology to build a series of urban farms across the region. Aquaponics combines both hydroponics and aquaculture to create a completely sustainable, closed-loop system for producing naturally organic produce and fish. Waste generated from fish is used to feed the system’s plants which in turn clean the water and return it to the fish. This method of growing not only produces food faster than traditional farming, it uses just five percent of the water while eradicating virtually all negative environmental impacts such as pesticide use, soil erosion, and carbon emissions. By locating on grocery store rooftops, FOCUS Foods also eliminates transportation costs and emissions, resulting in fresher, healthier food to consumers. The USDA estimates that produce can lose 77 percent of its Vitamin C in just a single week after harvesting and food today travels an average of 4,200 miles.Following its victory in the Harvard New Ventures Competition, FOCUS Foods then won the top prize at Carnegie Mellon’s Summit New Ventures Competition featuring pitches from both traditional businesses and social enterprises. This was then followed by another win in the Harvard-wide Dean’s Food Challenge for innovation in the commercial food market. The company has also received funding from the Wharton Innovation Fund and was one of ten finalists in the international Verizon Powerful Answers Competition with a $1 million Grand Prize.

FOCUS Foods recently completed testing of its first prototype and will be breaking ground on its first large-scale system later this summer on the ShopRite of Parkside, operated by the Brown family. To learn more about FOCUS Foods, please visit our website at focusfoodsinc.com.